Anyway, nothing really matters when you see this band live. For almost 40 minutes they go through a selection of songs who prove them to be one of the most exciting guitar bands around. The sound is just absolutely magic.

But fortunately, guitarist Oliver Ackermann nonchalantly walks over to his amp between songs, all scary big volume knobs and effects dials, and turns it up a notch until eventually, warning lights start blinking on every piece of electronic equipment in the area, and his amp is practically howling in the faces of the disorientated audience.

nice picture

My journey home left me contemplating how much of an impression APTBS leave on people. Having an extremely dedicated group of fans, I didn’t realise how popular they really are after witnessing these two gigs by them inside a week, and I firmly believe they have the ability to become a fairly massive underground alternative band for years to come. So far, they certainly have the songs and the stage performance to back that up.

The combination of chaotic stage lighting, explosive energy and a wealth of glamorous rock and roll gems left the indie zeitgeist with their leg hugging skinnies in a twist.

photo from a show in may 2010

Overall, it is an exercise in brilliant dynamic use and good (and damn clever) editing to tighten up and slightly solidify the song into a better experience overall. It is an intense trip overall and has a nice modern loudness to counterpoint its classic noise roots sound and feel.

a collection of b&w photos from the show

Video of set ending at UK show

“APtBS’s Oliver Ackerman trumps all by delivering the loudest and possibly our favourite set of the weekend. More ambiance-creating performance art than mere dark and smoky concert, the set contains no crowd banter, as Ackerman has probably already paid off the sound booth for the levels Heasley had to coax out onstage. APtBS take no prisoners in this ATP’s volume war–a war of attrition fomented by bands paying homage to curators MBV’s legacy of disintegrating earplugs. We’d call ourselves victims of the aural aggression but we’re actually really liking it”

“Band of the weekend, no contest. “

“Showing their shoe gaze influences, tracks such as ‘I Know I’ll See You’, ‘In Your Heart’ and ‘Dead Beat’, all sound simply incredible live, and at 4 in the afternoon, although seeming slightly surreal, as the band definitely suit a night time slot, the band were offered one of the performances of the weekend.”

“A Place To Bury Strangers
Interview Audio: A Place To Bury Strangers Interview. Oliver from New York residents A Place To Bury Strangers chatted to Tom before the Nottingham leg of their European tour at the Bodega.”

“It’s something you’re either going to love or hate but I happen to fall into the former category. Their performance was enhanced by trippy lighting that projected patterned light on the entire band making it an extremely stimulating aural and visual experience.”

“After exchanging pleasantries with fans outside the gig beforehand, lead singer Oliver Ackermann leads his band on stage and simply exudes the presence of a front man. Well, that’s if you can even see him or the rest of the band – with the smoke machines working overtime, the crowd are mostly left the peer through an every changing coloured mist as the hyperactive lightshow illuminates the venue.”

“APtBS are more than simple volume, much more. The sound they produce is meticulously constructed. The foundations are provided by Jay Space, his drumming, relentless and happily devoid of frills. On bass guitar, Jono Mofo, a tough Welsh/New Yorker who punches out a bass line as hard as nails. Chief architect and master builder is Oliver Ackermann, once more famous for his ‘Death by Audio’ effects pedals used by the likes of Kevin Shields, U2, Serena Maneesh, Airiel and Alcian Blue, to name but a few. Ackermann possesses a rare skill, much of it learnt through years of experimentation, a lot of it just good old-fashioned talent, he can craft sound.”

“But it’s with ‘I Lived My Life to Stand in The Shadow of Your Heart’, the epic closing track on Exploding Head, that Ackermann and co. firmly nail their colours to the mast. Three minutes of sugar-rush pop hooks suddenly collapse into a deafening ocean of wig-out feedback, the band drenched in strobing for what must be ten minutes. It’s their psychedelic ‘You Made Me Realise’ moment, blurring the lines between pleasure and pain like only the best shoegaze can. Exploding head indeed. In a scene beset by at least as many bandwagon-hoppers as genuine trailblazers, APTBS certainly can’t be accused of lacking substance. Hopefully the ringing in our ears will stop before work in the morning”

“A Place To Bury Strangers, live they’re an experience once seen and never forgotten, and for these ears at least, next month’s ATP show in Minehead can’t come soon enough.”

“Many will dismiss them as mere shoegaze revivalists, rehashers pushing a formula through further waves of effects, but there is so much more to the New York four-piece than that.”

“Again, this effect only emphasises their music, as the band seem to increase the volume even more while drenched in a sea of white light.”

With The Edge and Trent Reznor plugging into his Death by Audio effect pedals, and fans clamoring for his hot new band, A Place to Bury Strangers, guitarist/pedal designer Oliver Ackermann has become a force to be reckoned with.

New Tales to Tell: A Tribute to Love and Rockets features covers from Black Francis, the Flaming Lips, A Place to Bury Strangers, the Dandy Warhols, Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan’s Puscifer, and others. Sometime agent of change Shepherd Fairey designed the cover.

The Flaming Lips, Black Francis (a.k.a. Frank Black), Maynard James Keenan’s Puscifer project, A Place To Bury Strangers and The Dandy Warhols are among those who will appear on New Tales To Tell: A Tribute To Love And Rockets when it’s released this summer.

I’m also interested in hearing the contributions by Snowden and A Place To Bury Strangers.

We asked Ackermann a few questions about the new album, how he deals (or doesn’t deal) with the residual effects of noisemaking and how it felt for the Fredericksburg native to play the 9:30 Club back in October.

Crystal Stilts, Deerhunter, A Place To Bury Strangers, Forest Fire and Gang Gang Dance have all been added to the event which takes place from August 14th – 16th.

Don’t get me wrong, loud noise is still an important part of their sound – they play it as another instrument in a similar way to MBV – but there’s more going on. For me, tonight was about a gradual build of intensity, a slow creeping annihilation rather than a blitzkrieg. It was about Oliver Ackerman’s twisted guitar noises, about how he inhabits the music on stage, turning from retiring shoegaze/indie popster to dangerously-crazed shaman within the space of their 70 minute set.

Extraordinarily fuzzy and fried (if only such words signified something less jammy and more pent-up), A Place To Bury Strangers is a Brooklyn band given to a mix of new wave and industrial, or maybe just shoegazer rock with a mind for the ’80s. The group is the enterprise of Oliver Ackermann, who customizes his own guitar pedals and seems to really dig My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus And Mary Chain. It’s a chillingly retro sound, for sure, but one that hasn’t been beaten to death in the new millennium’s mad rush to cannibalize every form of music from the recent past.

Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2009 – Day 1

This almost-fascist view was completely blown away when I heard A Place To Bury Strangers. Seeing them live is an experience in itself and listening to A Falling Sun evoked the same spiritual epiphanies that I had only ever experienced before when listening to the immortal 4AD band Dead Can Dance. People class the band as shoegaze but it was psychedelic to the core. Yet the band class themselves as psychedelic rock.

So, Day One is winding down, and you want to impress your McCartney-loving buddies with your hip tastes. Well, your best bet is to drag them away from Paul on the main stage and end your night with the second (or maybe third or fourth) coming of The Jesus and Mary Chain in the form of A Place to Bury Strangers. They might be this year’s Black Rebel Motorcycle Club but that doesn’t mean their music can’t be any good.

As always with any festival there are conflicts with more than one artist I want to see performing at the same time. Heck, I will even be late for Sir Paul McCartney’s set! However, there is no way I will miss any of the set from A Place to Bury Strangers. That performance, along with the three aformentioned sets in this paragraph, could be the sets of the festival my friends.

As the band finish up with their personal favourite, Ocean, and the lights go up it’s clear by the look on everybody’s faces that they were not quite sure what hit them but were ecstatic that it did.

Interview by Clint Boon

APTBS shall be construed as the current New York’s loudest band. And the tradition has somehow, we think Sonic Youth at times. And the similarities are given, because APTBS unleash a veritable tsunami sound Fröhner and the poetry of distortion.

While the buzz rises and falls on bands faster then you can tweet about it these days, some bands have managed to maintain their buzz without doing much more then playing some captivating shows. A Place to Bury Strangers is one of those bands that just won’t go away, and why would anyone want them to? These guys flat out kick ass, and with their strobe light stage show they” leave you speechless, deaf, and blind before you know it.

photos

Their set is terrifying, thrilling, hypnotic. Ackermann looms over the crowd arching and careening wildly across the stage, wielding his guitar like it’s ready to attack him. The scattergun drums of the record are admirably replicated, the bass loud and foreboding. The band offer up a batch of new songs; one which stuck out was a mainly instrumental piece, with a hint of Japanese influence running through it. Although the sound isn’t perfect, and the vocals are still lost in the whirlwind of sound, the songs come through much better. ‘To fix a gash in your head’, is especially thrilling.

I like Mecanique Ondulatoire, the venue where I saw the ascendant fuzz rock royalty A Place to Bury Strangers, but by most standards – with just a 150-person capacity—it is too small for this band. (APTBS played Paris last November in the Nouveau Casino, a 400-person capacity venue.)

All in all, the vocals are stronger and the elements come through in a far more pressing way than on record – it’s like a million opuses within one take, drum sticks vibrating in the air against hyperbolic strobe lighting. And the greatest shock of them all is the way the set evoks such a broad spectrum of artists: Kraftwerk, The Slits, The Cure and The Velvet Underground. It’s in a the bass lines, the groove.

A Place to Bury Strangers
Seemingly every few months since the dawn of Sonic Youth, a new buzz band emerge using messy, puke-brown guitar squall to wow critics and annoy everyone else. A Place to Bury Strangers are not one of those bands. They’re noisy, but their squall is sculpted, obsidian and wrapped around seductively sad vocals. Excluding My Bloody Valentine, these Brookynites’ set promises the weekend’s coolest opportunity for hearing loss.

Closer Ocean has front man Oliver Ackermann tearing the strings off his guitar while much of the audience close their eyes to avoid the nauseating strobe. Lunches stay down and all is forgiven when the band finish their set and walk into the crowd, chatting, signing merchandise and posing for pictures with anyone and everyone who asks.